Dio benedica l'America: la religione civile nei discorsi inaugurali di alcuni presidenti degli Stati Uniti

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the role of civil religion in American political discourse, specifically through the analysis of the Presidential speeches given on the Inauguration day. This constitutes the target of the research. Civil religion is taken into consideration as a set of values capable of giving purpose to the people of a nation and to strengthen the bond between a country and its citizens. To prove this thesis the texts of the Inaugural Addresses of various Presidents from different periods of time will be analyzed and interpreted, considering the historical background and the circumstances of their issuance. After a brief excursus on the history of civil religion, starting with the person who coined the term and those who used it in the past, and after giving a broad definition of the concept, the work will focus on the function of civil religion in America, describing the sacralization of public life through the use of civil religion. The object of the writing will then shift to the Inaugural Addresses, and the analysis will combine both quantitative and qualitative methods, through personal interpretation of the texts and through the elaboration of data with the assistance of a software. The software will help explore the material and find concordances between words, repeated slogans and key words, by measuring the frequency of a word or of a cluster of words in a text. Finding patterns and religious references used by different presidents in their inaugurals will define the range of civil religion and will determine its utility, being a powerful instrument to instill patriotism and ideals into the population. Recurring themes in American civil religion are the idea of being a "chosen country", having a "moral duty", the veneration of American Institutions and documents, and the idealization of "sacrifice", through the mythicization of historical figures who became martyrs and heroes of American civil religion.